


Lying Lyra

by shortleviathan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Absent John, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Always Female Stiles Stilinski, Asthmatic Scott, Babysitting, Broken Families, Bullying, Dead Claudia Stilinski, Female Friendship, Gen, Hurt Stiles, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jealousy, Lonely Stiles Stilinski, Stiles-centric, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3742084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortleviathan/pseuds/shortleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyra is named Lying Lyra for a reason. She builds up all the little lies like shelter to protect herself from the big ones that hurt.<br/>Where female Stiles is named Lyra by her mother, Amber, and she deals with death by lying when the Sheriff turns to alcohol and fading memories. </p>
<p>Despite the name “Lying Lyra” that the boys gave her in elementary school, she rarely told lies. Her mother had told her that lies didn’t just hurt other people, they only hurt the liar.  Lyra imagined that each lie was like a worm digging deeper into an apple core and eventually the apple would rot away.<br/>The time she did start lying enough to prove her nickname was when her mother died. She couldn’t remember much about the closed casket funeral and the whispers of how unfortunate it was that such a young child was motherless. Instead, she remembers her father’s expression when he asked her if she was okay.<br/>“I’m fine,” she had replied, even while wiping her tears away. The soft funeral music with lyres and sad, tinkling bells was almost too perfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lying Lyra

Lyra was a name she always struggled with. When she was younger she used to sit on the lap of her mother and enjoy her mother singing softly. “While I sing, you’ll be my lyre,” her mother would say, softly swinging her in her arms like strings.

One day she made the mistake of wearing a cute, firetruck-red skirt. She had giggled when her mother put it on her because of the windy feeling she felt when she spun around. 

“Lyra, Lyra, pants on fire!” they had called her.  
The boys had simple names like Matt and Bobby, so she couldn’t think of anything to say back. She never wore the skirt again despite how free it made her feel. Her mother didn’t understand, but she still gave her soft skirts of floral and blue prints for church days.

Despite the name “Lying Lyra” that the boys gave her in elementary school, she rarely told lies. Her mother had told her that lies didn’t just hurt other people, they only hurt the liar. Lyra imagined that each lie was like a worm digging deeper into an apple core and eventually the apple would rot away. She didn’t like apples much, because the ones her friends and she gave to the teacher had been forgotten in the back of the classroom because the teacher was stuck on keeping the boys out of trouble. 

The time she did start lying enough to prove her nickname was when her mother died. She couldn’t remember much about the closed casket funeral and the whispers of how unfortunate it was that such a young child was motherless. Instead, she remembers her father’s expression when he asked her if she was okay. 

“I’m fine,” she had replied, even while wiping her tears away. The soft funeral music with lyres and sad, tinkling bells was almost too perfect. Her father had shrugged and just patted his hand on her shoulder. 

“I’m fine,” she had told her friends when she came back to school after a couple days of absences. She rarely brought them to her house because she was afraid the beeping and the tubes attached to her mother would scare them away, so they never really knew her mother. “I just had the flu.” 

“I’m fine,” she told her father when he started working more shifts to pay off her mother’s bills. “Miss Stacey is a nice babysitter. She helps me with my homework. You suck at word problems.” 

Miss Stacey was her high school neighbor who needed the extra cash to keep up with the fashion trends to impress her athletic boyfriend and dance team friends.

“Call me Stacey already, Lyra,” Stacey laughed. “That makes me feel as old as my mother.” 

Stacey was nice because she sometimes gave Lyra an extra bit more for dessert and helped her with her art projects.

“I know all the sugar is probably bad for hyper kids like you,” Stacey had said, while thoughtfully looking at the nutritional facts, “but my mother never gave me treats like this. She wants me skinny as a stick!” 

Stacey had an eye for colors through her years of outfit making. “Maybe… I could have been an artist instead,” she said one afternoon, when Lyra tried not to notice the hesitation in her voice. Stacey had been a little late to babysit Lyra because she had to stay later afterschool. She wasn’t on the callback sheet. She didn’t make the dance team this year. 

So Lyra told Stacey no because the dance videos of Stacey’s competitions were absolutely amazing. 

Sometimes Lyra thought that little lies were okay. Maybe each little lie wasn’t a worm but was a baby caterpillar trying to find and eat its way into a butterfly, and that sometimes it had to hurt a little before it got better. Jennifer from her science class laughed at that because “Caterpillars don’t eat apples, Lying Lyra.” Then maybe Lyra thought that some people had already rotting apples and the worms or caterpillars or whatever were just trying to help clear it away. 

Little lies were okay because it was the big, important lies that hurt people. Big lies like Stacey loved her dance team friends for making the team. Lies like Stacey’s boyfriend was loyal and didn’t care much for her best friend. Lies like Stacey’s mother was a single mother that was doing fine. 

Then Stacey stopped coming over and Lyra’s father found another babysitter named Laura who needed the money to pay for college textbooks instead. “Stacey’s too busy with school and needs to focus on studying,” her father said. Her father was trying to protect her with little lies but it was still the big lies that hurt people. 

Stacey’s boyfriend and friends didn’t attend the funeral. 

\----------  
Then Lyra’s closest friends went to a different middle school because Lyra lived just past the school districts mean little borders. Even more unfortunately, the same annoying boys from elementary school attended Lincoln Middle School. “Funny name the middle school has. A school named after ‘Honest Abe’ with Lying Lyra in it,” they taunted. 

“Don’t mind them,” the girl next to Lyra in homeroom said. “Hi, I’m Scout. Your hair is pretty.” 

“Thanks,” Lyra said. She absentmindedly patted it down. “I like yours too.”

Lyra had chopped her hair until it reached her chin. When her father remembered to ruffle her hair it no longer got tangled and Lyra also did not have to remember how her mother used to braid and brush her hair. Scout’s hair looked like a fluffy mess, like a puppy. She had a cute, crooked grin though, happy even though her asthma prevents her from making the school lacrosse club. 

“Scout runs fast but she's never gonna make it anywhere,” Jennifer from science class who was now in her English class said. “One day she'll laugh so hard at your stupidity that she'll stop breathing.” Lyra thought Jennifer managed to sound jealous and condescending at the same time. 

“Jennifer thinks you run pretty fast,” Lyra then told Scout. Little lies were okay. The big ones where Lyra had to call 911 when Scout couldn't even breathe with the inhaler on the lacrosse field because Scout insisted on training to be better because her father loves lacrosse and she was afraid her parents were divorcing were not okay. 

\----------  
When Scout was in the hospital Lyra was tired of Jennifer and her friends making up bad rumors, and Lyra still didn’t like hospitals. “She’s sick at the hospital. Boring,” Lyra said to them one day, trying to act casual by looking at the ground. 

Jennifer rolled her eyes. “You came all the way from the loser side of the courtyard to tell us this?” 

Lyra shrugged and dug her shoes into the grass. “Fine. Scout’s mom is taking her that private school…you know, the one where you have to test to get in…just for a tour. Because she got in,” she said reluctantly. “Scout’s awfully shy so she didn’t want a lot of people to know.” 

So of course Jennifer starts up nasty rumors that Scout got into that private elite school because she probably cheated so everyone then rolls their eyes because they know Jennifer is jealous of “Stupid Scout” again. 

Scout comes back with an actual hospital’s note for the teacher and lost all hopes for lacrosse, although Lyra is quick to approve of this. Scout's confused and everyone’s confused by the rumors but by now everyone knows this. Lyra is Lying Lyra and is a good person to gossip with. Jennifer sulked for a while because she can’t believe she got fooled by Lying Lyra and believed that Stupid Scout was smart. Scout smiled at Lyra because Lyra helped take Jennifer down a notch. 

Random people approached Lyra in middle school. Sometimes they were scared of a bully. Sometimes they avoided this person because they had a crush on them. Sometimes longs sleeves could hide answers for tests and scar marks too. Lyra would take their big lies and turn them into little lies that people could swallow and not choke up on. 

“Lydia once had a dog but it ran away because she was so mean. Tiny and sweet Ally, on the other hand, has an adorable Labrador.”

“Jackson smells like he sprays too much deodorant because he’s lonely and wants a girlfriend really badly. Now all the girls avoid him.”

“Erica wears long sleeves because she gets so cold that scientists once contacted her asking if she could help end global warming.” 

Lying Lyra was safe because everyone believed that whatever came out of her mouth was a lie and they didn’t need to care. People told her secrets because whenever she repeated them people would just shrug and then carry on with their day. She was a convenient person to rant or cry to and could stop or encourage rumors. Students would make bets on whether the excuses she said to the teacher were true or not when she did not have her homework. 

Lyra heard lies almost every day from breaking people who had no one else to talk to. These lies were so big and scary that they took control of people and made them into victims. Lyra was stronger. The little lies she made were bricks coming together to make a house to protect herself. Lies didn’t control her. She controlled lies and rumors and could manipulate them into whatever shelter she wanted. 

Lying to her father was easy. He constantly was busy with work, busy with his drinking friends, busy with mortgages and bills. 

At the end of the day, the only person she could never lie to was her mother. Her mother saw through everything. When Lyra had come home after the boys said her skirt made her “Lyra, Lyra, pants on fire” her mother knew that the tears weren’t from tripping on the stairs. Her mother knew that Lyra never brought her friends over because she was both scared and ashamed for and of her mother. Her mother knew that her death would not be easy for her widowed husband and motherless daughter. Now Lyra’s polygraph was gone. 

Her mother may not have understood why Lyra was Lying Lyra, that Lyra’s core was already rotten and hollowed out to be filled with lies, but her mother would understand that her family was broken. 

The “sure, I’m alright” and “I’m working the late shift tonight” would be seen as lies, just as the lies Lyra cooked up for family dinner to maintain some semblance that they were a functioning family with normal family dinners. 

Lying to herself was just as hard. The empty table at dinner time and the shadow on the couch towards midnight reminded her of that. Lyra could tell herself that her reduced family was fine, but she knows it isn’t. The clinking of glasses when her father comes home and the thrown away report cards before school vacations are obvious. 

One of the smallest lies that Lyra tells herself hides the biggest one of all. Lyra says her eyes are honey colored, just like her mothers. Sweet, trapping honey that reminds herself of her mother’s singing. Lyra knows that in reality, her mother called their eyes “amber, whiskey, and gold mixed together”. Lyra doesn’t want to remember that because her father’s hangover in the morning and the way he avoids her eyes say everything. Maybe he avoids looking at Lyra’s eyes because they remind him that he has a responsibility, a daughter to care for. Maybe he avoids her eyes because he’s had his share of whiskey already. But Lyra, poor Lying Lyra knows that he just can’t bear to look at those eyes similar to his dead wife Amber as he still wears the golden wedding ring of forever in the hand holding his bottle of whiskey.

**Author's Note:**

> This work of fiction was originally not based on Teen Wolf. However, as I was writing, I began to realize that this is how Stiles would deal with death. Although Stiles puts up a happy teenager front, obviously the supernatural and his family affect him. I didn't want to change the name Lyra because it matches with Lying Lyra, but it's a very pretty name, although not Polish.  
> This piece of work just flowed out of my brain directly onto paper without being edited, so it's basically just a rough draft, but I was very excited to finally upload.


End file.
